22 CultureShock! Austria
especially those in the Alpine provinces, the three major
political parties were all favourable to a union with Germany.
However, this would not have been in the best interests of
Austria’s World War I adversaries, and thus any merger was
expressly forbidden by the treaty ending the war. So the
country was called merely ‘Austria’ and in February 1919, the
Social Democrat Dr Karl Renner was elected the first state
chancellor. The coalition that had brought Renner into power
broke down the following year. The conservative Christian
Social Party won elections in October 1920 and in essence
ran the federal government until 1938. The inter-war years
were marked by economic crisis, inflation, unemployment,
hunger and violence.Red Vienna
Constitutional reform in 1922 granted Vienna special status as
a Land or semi-autonomous province. The Social Democrats
governing Vienna introduced a number of important social
reforms, which ushered in the period known as Red Vienna.
They instituted a massive housing programme, buildingRed Vienna produced a large number of public housing complexes, but the
Karl-Marx-Hof in the 19th district is the most famous.